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I think I heard recently that coinmarketcap.com is going to start charging a fee or requiring a paid subscription for this information (unless I am thoroughly confused or did not hear all of the story and misinterpreted what I heard). Because my holdings are so low, I can't justify paying for that as it will essentially eat up the value of all of my holdings in fairly short order.
Where did you heard that they are charging fees now?
Can you give us the links?
So my questions = (1) am I correct that the coinmarketcap 'free ride' is coming to an end or did I misinterpret this?
(2) do I have another 'free' option of getting this information automatically updated in my spreadsheet?
If not - I'm okay with that. No sense spending more value than I own just for the convenience of knowing how much my minuscule holdings are fluctuating. But if I
can keep this convenience, I would like to do that.

Again, it boils down as to where you heard this news. I haven't heard anything though to be honest, so its really hard to comment on it. There's a lot of websites similar to coinmarketcap where you can pull your data. Here is a thread wherein we have a discussions about coinmarketcap alternatives:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3094720.5. I already put there a list, just go and check it out.